Brad Davis Biography, Life, Interesting Facts

Childhood And Early Life

American actor Brad Davis was born in Tallahassee Florida. He was raised in Titusville and moved to New York City as a teenager. His parents were Eugene Davis and Anne Creel. Accordingly to an article in the New York Times (April 1997), he had a difficult childhood with an alcoholic father and sexually abusive mother.

Education

Brad Davis studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and also had lessons with the acting coach Wynn Handman.

Rise To Stardom

Brad Davis took various small roles in off-broadway productions and television before landing a role in the successful miniseries Roots (1976) which was based on Arthur Haley’s novel of the same name.

Career

Brad Davis shot to prominence with the film Midnight Express (1978). He played the part of Bill Hayes, a young American college student, caught up in a nightmare situation in jail in Istanbul Turkey.

He appeared the 1981 Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire which was centered around two British athletes at the Summer Olympics of 1924. Davis portrayed Jackson Scholz. Brad Davis also starred in The Normal Heart (1985) a play about AIDs-HIV.

Other roles included Querelle (1982), Blood Ties (1986), The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1988), The Rainbow Warrior Conspiracy (1989) and The Plot to Kill Hitler (1990).

Awards And Achievements

Brad Davis won a 1979 Golden Globe Best Motion Picture Acting Debut award for Midnight Express (1978). The same year he was also nominated for a Golden Globe Best Actor in a Motion Picture and a BAFTA Award. In 1978 he won the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Best Actor Award for his role in Midnight Express.

Personal Life

After his early success in the film industry, Brad Davis battled substance abuse issues but by 1981 had overcome them. He was married to Susan Bluestein for fifteen years, and they had one child, Alex.

Diseases Disabilities

In 1985 Brad Davis contacted the AIDS virus and died in 1991 of assisted suicide (New York Times April 1997).